jQuery is a fantastic library but it needs to stay lean and small by providing only the most commonly need features. However there are many other little utilities that I have used frequently enough and found myself always rewriting them, so I started collecting them into a little library. Many of these are just little shortcuts to code I find myself constantly typing out, but don’t think of it as a whole library you need to load into your code. Just take the pieces you need and leave the pieces you don’t need.
Note that I have wrapped many of these functions into jQuery although that is not required and other than the $.postJSON and $.stop() methods these functions can be used in any JavaScript library or just standalone all together.
You can download the library and checkout documentation for it here.
Also feel free to submit your own utils here
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jQuery.postJSON()
Not sure why jQuery hasn’t tossed this little shortcut in since they already have the $.getJSON method. They do have a $.post method that is pretty much the same minus having to specify the dataType, but I find this is a nice little shortcut I frequently use.
$.postJSON( "/put/path/here", {val1: "Cheetos", val2: "Nachos"}, function(response){ //on success do something } ); -
jQuery.stop()
This is another little shortcut to prevent event propagation. It accepts options for preventDefault and stopPropgation.
$.stop(event, preventDefault, stopPropagation); $("#container").click(function(e) { $.stop(e, true, true); }); -
jQuery.shuffleArray()
I haven’t used this often, but it’s great to have handy, randomly shuffle an array.
$.shuffleArray([1,2,3,4,5,6,7]); //potential output: [1,3,5,7,2,4,6]
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jQuery.reload()
This is just a shorthand function to reload the page rather than using “window.location.reload(true)”
$.reload();
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jQuery.uri()
This parses the URI component of a URL and lets you access it by it’s index starting from 1.
http://www.domain.com/this/domain/rocks $.uri(1); //will output this $.uri(3); //will output rocks
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jQuery.URLParams()
I have probably rewritten this little method about 100 times, it’s a simple little split string one liner that you never think to wrap in a function for reuse. Note that it also handles hash tags.
http://www.domain.com/this/domain/rocks?param=fantastic&test=awesome#websanova $.URLParams(); // {param: 'fantastic', test: 'awesome'} $.URLParams('test'); // awesome -
jQuery.URLHash()
This is similar to the URLParams function except it returns the hash in a URL if any.
http://www.domain.com/this/domain/rocks?param=fantastic&test=awesome#websanova $.URLHash(); // websanova
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jQuery.hexToRGB()
This is a nice little conversion function to have handy, it accepts a HEX or RGB string value and converts it. Invalid values are returned false.
$.hexToRGB("#FF3388"); // rgb(255,51,136) $.hexToRGB("#F38"); // rgb(255,51,136) $.hexToRGB("#ZZ3388"); // false $.hexToRGB("F38A"); // false $.hexToRGB("rgb(22,67,234)"); // #1643EA $.hexToRGB("rgb(22,67,274)"); // false $.hexToRGB("rgb(22,67)"); // false -
jQuery.base64Encode()
This little function base64 encodes a string, note that it requires the string to be in utf8 format so you will need the utf8encode function as well.
$.base64Encode("encode this string"); // ZW5jb2RlIHRoaXMgc3RyaW5n -
jQuery.base64Decode()
This decodes a base64 encoded string. Note that it also applies the utf8 decoding that was applied during the base64 encode.
$.base64Decode("ZW5jb2RlIHRoaXMgc3RyaW5n"); // encode this string -
jQuery.utf8Encode()
UTF8 encode a string, this is primarily used with the base64Encode function from above.
$.utf8Encode("utf8 encode this"); -
jQuery.utf8Decode()
Decodes a UTF8 encoded string.
$.utf8Decode("utf8 encode this"); -
.removeClassRegEx()
This is a great little function that can be a life saver. I use this a lot to remove all classes starting with a particular string.
<div class="test testing leavemealone hellotest Tester"></div> $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test/i); //class="leavemealone" $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test/); //class="leavemealone Tester" $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/^test/i); //class="leavemealone hellotest" $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test$/); //class="testing leavemealone Tester" -
.hasClassRegEx()
Similar to the removeClassRegEx this checks to see if any class matches the regular expression.
<div class="test testing leavemealone hellotest Tester"></div> $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test/i); // true $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test/); // true $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/^test/i); // true $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/test$/); // true $("#container").removeClassRegEx(/^testy$/); // false -
.maxChars()
This is very useful to have for any input fields particularly a textarea which does not have a “maxlength” attribute. It also allows you to specify a target that will display the characters left.
$("input").maxChars(50); $("input").maxChars(50, $("#maxChars_counter")); -
Object.sizeof()
Yes this is just a JavaScript extension, but very useful to get the length of your objects. Although in most cases you will have the length property set, but for objects you will not.
{cow: "moo", duck: "quack"}.sizeof(); // 2 -
String.capitalize()
This is another JavaScript extension but great to have around, a simple capitalize extension to the String object.
"test".capitalize(); // Test
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String.pxToInt()
Another JavaScript extension, I found myself doing this so often when I returned CSS attributes in jQuery needing them as an integer that I wrote this little shorthand function to quickly convert them for me. Note that this returns an integer number value.
"210px".pxToInt(); //210 $("container").css('height').pxToInt(); // 400
jQuery Plugin Development Boilerplate
10 Coding Tips to Write Superior jQuery Plugins
Your Object.sizeof() example is not valid JavaScript. Also, sizeof as an extension method is somewhat unnecessary as it can be accomplished with Object.keys(myObj).length.